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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26335537">Paper burns</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/pturple_ptatoe/pseuds/pturple_ptatoe'>pturple_ptatoe</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Only the fool can tell the king the truth [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman (Movies - Nolan), Paper Towns - John Green</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Concept/idea, gender neutral narrator</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 02:46:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>656</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26335537</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/pturple_ptatoe/pseuds/pturple_ptatoe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Joker x reader but make it Paper Towns AU. Pitch idea plus a few excerpts.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joker (DCU)/Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Only the fool can tell the king the truth [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1935667</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Paper burns</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Excerpts are almost word for word from paper towns, reworked to fit my au</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>This is 10 years before Dark Knight. You live in the most detroitious part of Gotham. You live next door to the infamous legend and fellow schoolmate, Joseph Kerr. You two used to be friends as kids, but when his father was found dead in the park, things sort of broke off. Then one night during your last year of high school, he drops by your bedroom window and he says he needs your car and for you to be his getaway man. You say yes. You and him dish out punishments and crimes to deserving people in a joker-lite sort of manner. The next day he disappears. After months of trying to find him, you track him down to a tiny abandoned shack on the outskirts of the opposite side of Gotham. He promises he’ll keep in touch with you. Throughout the following years you sometimes get letters in the mail, filled with joker cards and clues only you can figure out.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>You swiveled around when you heard the bedroom window open, and Joseph Kerr’s brown eyes were staring back at you. His eyes were all you could recognize at first because his face was covered in ghoulish paint. You walked over and knelt by the window, your faces inches from his.<br/><br/>“To what do I owe the pleasure?” You asked. You hadn’t talked to him in nearly ten years. You couldn’t imagine why he was here at your window again. He and you weren’t on bad terms, but certainly not meet-in-the-dead-of-night-wearing-war-paint terms. Surely he had henchmen for that.<br/><br/>“I need a car,” he said. “Also, I need you to drive it, because I have to do eleven things tonight, and at least five of them involve a getaway man.”</p><p>***</p><p>The elevators were down for the night. He bounded the stairs two at a time, flying up. When you got to the twenty-fifth floor, he was standing at the landing, waiting for you.</p><p>“Check it out,” he said. He opened the stairwell door and you were inside a huge room with a long bank of floor to ceiling windows. “It’s got the best view in the building.” You followed him as he walked along the windows. “See there? Lights still off, so that’s good. And here and here? Lights are off now, so no more cop cars.”</p><p>He was quiet for a moment.</p><p>“It’s pretty,” You said.</p><p>He turned to look at you. “Really? You seriously think so?”</p><p>“From a distance, I mean. You can’t see the wear on things. The rust or the weeds or the paint cracking. You see Gotham as someone once imagined.”</p><p>His eyes went back to the view. He had always spoken in a manic soliloquy. “You can tell what the place really is. You can see how fake it all is. It’s not even hard enough to be made of plastic. It’s all paper. Look at the the paper people sitting around in paper buildings, too demented with the mania of owning paper things to see how they’re burning.”</p><p>***</p><p>You walk into the shack. And after months and months trying to find him you see him hunched over a beat up school desk, writing in a notebook. Here he was: five feet away from you - hair greasy, lips chapped, clothes grimy, looking like he could use a nice meal and a good nights rest. He looked up at you, and if he was surprised to see you, his eyes did not give it away. In fact, they were silent. You had never seen his eyes dead like that. He stared at you in a silence that seemed to last an eternity.<br/><br/>Finally, he said, “Give me like five minutes,” and then resumed his writing. You watched him write, and that’s when you realized your idea of him was not only wrong but dangerous. What a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person.</p>
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